Johannes in retroland

Archive for the ‘film’ Category

Fellini’s Roma(1972) goes into some themes that the filmmaker, Fellini explores in Amarcord and some of his eariler work. Mixture of the Neo Realism period of the 1950s with the Excessive period of the Mid to late 1960s. Follows some of the same patterns as Fellini Satryicon(1969). In the top five of Federico Fellini’s films from the late period of his career. Part of the story uses a film within a film structure.

Bron: rottentomatoes.com

When his wife Grace inherits her father’s stock, John Miller, the president of the Western Power and Development Company, becomes a millionaire and moves to New York with his family. Beset by business problems, Miller pays little attention to his wife, and Grace, feeling neglected, takes up with a bohemian set. Among her new acquaintances she meets Stuart Mordant, the attorney for Thomas Hurd, a business rival of Miller’s. Grace seeks refuge from loneliness in Mordant, who makes a bargain with Hurd to gain control of her husband’s company for half a million dollars. Mordant succeeds in compromising Grace and Miller, finding evidence of his wife’s betrayal, insists upon a divorce. Grace transfers her stock to Mordant, and at the stockholders’ meeting, Hurd demands Miller’s resignation. He is about to comply when Grace enters, exposes Mordant and destroys the transfer. Miller offers Mordant a pistol, suggesting that suicide is his only honorable alternative. Mordant takes the gun and leaves the room, but escapes to Europe, leaving behind a note which exonerates Grace. Grace and Miller then decide to unravel their problems together.

Bron: afi.com

This classic film, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, is easily one of the best films of all time. A pretty bold statement, perhaps, until you’ve actually sat down and soaked in its vicious, chilled vitriol. Burt Lancaster never portrayed calculated maliciousness more convincingly, and baby-faced Tony Curtis literally drips with self-serving viciousness. It is, as Curtis’s Sidney Falco proclaims, “a cookie filled with arsenic.”

Bron: beatnikpad.com

Directed and produced by E. A. Martin; starring Adele Lane and Edwin Wallock. Scenario by Curwood, and used as basis for Phantom Patrol in 1936.

Bron: rainfall.com/posters/Movie

Paul (Peter Fonda) is a director of television commercials who feels the need to go on a journey of self-discovery now that his marriage is over. He meets up with John (Bruce Dern) and they go to a party so that Paul can try LSD for the first time, with John as his guide. Paul relaxes as the drug takes hold, but is unprepared for the barrage of images that he sees, and ends up wandering the streets, stoned…

Bron: thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms

The greatest and most famous classic adventure-fantasy (and part-horror) film of all time is King Kong (1933). Co-producers and directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (both real-life adventurers and film documentarians) conceived of the low-budget story of a beautiful, plucky blonde woman (Fay Wray) and a frightening, gigantic, 50 foot ape-monster as a metaphoric re-telling of the archetypal Beauty and the Beast fable. [Fay Wray mistakenly believed that her RKO film co-star, 'the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood,' would be Cary Grant rather than the beast. Later in her life, she titled her autobiography "On the Other Hand" in memory of her squirming in Kong's grip.]

Bron: filmsite.org

Fairly standard story — Crawford is a “career gal” in love with her boss — the exquisitely dapper and gentlemanly Kruger — or, at least, she thinks she is until a shipboard romance with Argentinian rancher Gable gets in the way. The only gimmick here is the audience’s expectation that Kruger will go mad or seek some kind of revenge (you can even imagine Lon Chaney in the role), but he doesn’t. The chemistry between Gable and Crawford is the picture of passion, although they are not aided by the tepid dialogue (“the sun of love will always shine on us” and such stuff), and Kruger and Crawford present a believable picture of a marriage based on respect instead of love.

Bron: imdb.com